Sunday, June 1, 2014

The Way We Live Now, at EIL

The long haul is over and I have not only finished what some call Trollope's masterpiece but have discussed it with friends and reviewed it. You can find the review at Escape Into Life. I am now very curious to watch the Masterpiece Theatre production of the story, not least because it is bound to fill in some of the details Trollope didn't bother himself over, such as what they wore, what they ate, what the scenery is like. Just the sort of thing that Masterpiece Theatre is good at.

One interesting surprise is that far from putting me off long bulky books, reading it has somehow given me a renewed appetite for them. I immediately plunged into Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman.

2 comments:

I didn't think it was too long, although I was very conscious that it would have been edited down if it were written today. But as a friend in the group pointed out, since it was written originally as a serial, a certain amount of repetition is probably not only unavoidable but desirable. He said, and I agree, that because of this sequential quality, the book is very easy to put down and pick up a good while later and not feel lost or baffled as to what's going on.

I think I still prefer the four of the six Barsetshire novels I read--stopped only because my life got interrupted in some way back then--but it's possible that it's just that my reading tastes have changed a little in the interim. I am going to watch the Masterpiece Theatre version at some point though.